My Mommy, the Hok'tar
by mmooch
Summary: Buffy's pregnant, but who's the lucky guy? Pairing unsure for now. WARNING: Character death.
1. Chapter 1: The Experiment

**My Mommy, the Hok'tar**

Summary: Buffy's pregnant, but who's the lucky guy?

Timeline: BtVS – post-episode 4:10 _'Hush'_, Stargate SG-1 – post-episode 5:14_'48 Hours'_.

Warning: Not a Riley-friendly fic!

A/N: BtVS canon changes – Instead of promising to keep each other's secret, Riley and Buffy tell Walsh and Giles about the other. An uneasy alliance is reached between the Initiative and the Scoobies.

Challenge: #2666 'Conception by Conspiracy' by zoev. It isn't an exact match, but hopefully it's close enough for zoev.

Disclaimer: BtVS/AtS characters belong to Joss Whedon / Mutant Enemy. Stargate characters belong to Robert C. Cooper and Brad Wright / SyFy Channel. I claim no rights to any copyrighted material. Please do not copy or take this story without my permission.

**Chapter 1: The Experiment**

**Stargate Command**

General George Hammond wanted to slam his head on his desk…repeatedly. He had just got off _The_ Phone, and the news he had received floored him. His people were used in some sort of breeding experiment! He'd say that it was only his best team that attracted this sort of trouble – except there was a name that he barely recognized on the list. Or at least one he _wished_ he could forget.

Now he got the oh-so-pleasant task of telling his Second in Command (2IC), Colonel Jack O'Neill, what was happening. Normally, he'd just have Jack come to his office. But this…for this he knew that _both_ he and Jack would need some bourbon – or something similar – to get past the shock.

**

* * *

**

Jack O'Neill's house, that night…

Jack handed his friend and commander the tumbler of amber liquor. "So George, what's going on that we can't talk about it at the mountain?" he inquired warily.

Hammond stared into his glass, hoping the answer would appear how to tell his friend. "There's an NID operation in Sunnydale, California, and you're not going to be happy when you hear one of the projects they're working on."

Not liking the look on Hammond's face, Jack prompted carefully, "Okay, so…what is it?"

Hammond cleared his throat and began, "Apparently, they've come across a young, college girl, who appears to be a Hok'tar. Instead of telling _us_ about her, they've decided to experiment, using her-"

"What? They're experimenting on a human girl?" Jack shouted, leaping to his feet.

"Sit down, Jack! There's more," Hammond commanded. When Jack did so, he went on, "For some reason, they've decided the girl wasn't interesting enough on her own. They want to see what her _children_ would be like if they mixed her DNA with other 'special' people. Jack, your name is on that list – as well as Daniel, Teal'c, and Rodney McKay."

Jack thought about the name before it came to him. "McKay? Wasn't he that arrogant SOB that 'helped' us when Teal'c got stuck in the gate?" he asked with a look of disdain.

Hammond nodded, "One in the same. I guess his genius IQ was interesting enough to them to use him."

"Does the girl know?" Jack asked, putting down his drink to run his hands over his short, military-cut hair. Even if he thought he were ready to have another kid, this wasn't the way for it to happen. Course, he doubted that he was ever supposed to find out. Hammond's next words confirmed that.

"According to their records, she knows she's different than other humans. But she doesn't know about the experiment. Once her pregnancy is confirmed, they plan to hold her until she delivers. After that, they have several options they're considering: kill her; harvest her eggs, _then_ kill her; continue to hold her and keep impregnating her," Hammond explained, his voice making it clear his opinion of these people's actions.

Jack took a swig from his tumbler and muttered, "And I thought the Goa'uld were evil."

"To quote Teal'c, _'Indeed'_," his commander quickly agreed.

"So what are _we_ going to do about it? Do we know if they've already done it?" he checked, hoping that it wasn't too late to stop this monstrosity.

Shrugging his shoulders, Hammond continued his earlier briefing, "I don't know if they've inseminated her or not. They appear to be waiting for the right opportunity in order to keep her, her family and friends from finding out about it. But if they're successful, they plan to fake her death, so the others don't try to look for her."

The leader of SG-1begged the older man, "_Please_ tell me this is a rogue operation!"

"The operation itself is legitimate, but this _project_ isn't." Hammond paused for a breath before going on, "Because they are using military personnel, we have authorization from the Joint Chiefs to go there and clean this up. We are also ordered to investigate to see if there are any _other_ unauthorized projects going on and, if necessary, shut them down too."

Suddenly, Jack was curious about something else. "So what does the legitimate part of this group do?" he questioned.

"Kill and/or capture HSTs – Hostile Subterrestrials – whatever they are," Hammond responded with a confused look.

Guessing that the General didn't know anything else about the operation, Jack left it alone. "I guess we'll have to find out when we go there. Do we have the girl's name?"

Hammond nodded, "Yes. It's Buffy Anne Summers."

* * *

A/N: Good, bad, ugly?

**TBC…**


	2. Chapter 2: Of Mages and Lesbians

**Chapter 2: Of Mages and Lesbians**

A/N: Canon changes to Ethan's character and Tara's timeline.

Challenge: #2666 'Conception by Conspiracy' by zoev. It isn't an exact match, but hopefully it's close enough for zoev.

Disclaimer: BtVS/AtS characters belong to Joss Whedon / Mutant Enemy. Stargate characters belong to Robert C. Cooper and Brad Wright / SyFy Channel. I claim no rights to any copyrighted material. Please do not copy or take this story without my permission.

* * *

**UC-Sunnydale dorms**

Buffy looked over at her redheaded best friend on the other bed. "I don't know, Willow. It just seems strange. Ever since I was in the infirmary last week, Professor Walsh has been watching me…like she knows something I don't."

"Have you said anything to Giles about it?" Willow asked, worried for her best friend.

Ever since Ethan told them about the Initiative and something called '314' – as well as another project so secret they didn't even have a code-word for it – they had all grown more suspicious of the top-secret demon-fighting group. The fact that Ethan had come to them at all spoke volumes about how bad things might be.

However, it did have one positive side effect: Ethan apologized for the trouble he had caused them in the past. He vowed that he didn't know the full story for the band candy incident – he wasn't so heartless as to want to harm children.

And the Halloween spell was essentially harmless to humans. Oh, it scared the life out of them, only not literally. When it ended, all injuries related to it reverted as well. The only ones to suffer permanently were the supernatural beings.

That left Eyghon…that one he _did_ have some major groveling to do. He had gone after Buffy, and that made Giles very angry with his old friend. The only thing that Ethan could say was that he was terrified, and he thought that Buffy would somehow be able to survive it. After all, she survived the prophecy that said she would die at the hands of the Master.

Against their better judgment, they decided to forgive him. Then he and Giles decided that if the Initiative were really up to something bad, the young wiccas needed to increase their magical training and worked quietly to build their discipline and power. They kept this all a secret though, even from Riley.

"Yeah. He just said to keep my eyes and ears open for any suspicious behavior – other than what I've already noticed," Buffy clarified, obviously not happy.

Willow wondered if the Professor's interest in Buffy had anything to do with her Slayer powers. The idea that they experiment on her though…she couldn't stop the shudder. "You don't think she _did_ something to you, do you?"

Buffy shook her head, but didn't look entirely convinced, "I don't know. There's something going on that feels wiggy to me, but I don't _physically_ feel any different. All my Slayer powers are working fine, too."

"Well, I guess until we learn different, we'll just have to let it go. On a happier topic, how are things with you and Riley?" the wicca asked, bouncing slightly in her seat.

Groaning, Buffy laid back on her bed. "Again, there's weirdness. He acts like he's interested, but whenever I try to make with the smoochies, he backs off like I have the cooties or something."

Willow was saddened for her best friend; she really had bad luck where guys were concerned – not that hers was any better. She suggested hopefully, "Maybe he just doesn't want to push you. You know, on account of that poophead, Parker."

"Or maybe he thinks I got some kind of disease from Parker and doesn't want to risk getting it from me," Buffy shot back, annoyed at the world – but mostly men.

"Umm, _have_ you been tested? I know you used a condom, but they aren't fool-proof," Willow told her, sickened at the idea that something could have happened.

Buffy rolled to the side to glare at her friend. "That's a happy thought."

Willow winced at the look and hurried to explain, "I'm sorry. It's just-"

"Parker was a man-whore who slept with any idiot who fell for his 'sensitive guy' routine?" Buffy interrupted with a self-loathing tone.

The redhead's eyes brightened with tears in sympathy. "Well, yeah. I mean about the sleeping around part, not the idiot part, because you're not an idiot, Buffy; you were just vulnerable, and he took advantage of that and-"

The Slayer cut her off again, not willing to excuse her own behavior, "I was an idiot for going to bed with him. No matter how badly he tricked me, I shouldn't have slept with someone I just met. It took me a year to get to that point with Angel, and yeah, he's not the best example for a relationship either, but the point is: I waited. Now I just realized that I shouldn't be complaining about Riley's lack of interest – except for wondering if I'm not attractive anymore."

"Of course you are! You're _very_ attractive, Buffy!" Willow insisted, a little too vehemently.

Which Buffy caught right away. "Something you want to tell me, Wills? You aren't harboring lusty thoughts about me, are you?" she teased.

Willow shook her head adamantly, "No! But, would there be anything wrong with it if I were?" she ventured, testing the waters for some thoughts she _had_ been having lately for another blonde.

"Except for that I've already gone through this with Xander, no," Buffy told her nervous friend. "I dated a vampire; you dated a werewolf; Xander is currently dating an ex-demon. Compared to those things…batting for the home team is nothing. In fact, it would probably be one of the most _normal_ relationships any of us has had," she finished with a smirk.

"So if I _were_ into girls?" the redhead pushed.

"As long as she treated you right, I wouldn't care," Buffy answered. Then she got a curious look on her face and asked, "_Is_ there someone? Like from that wicca group, maybe?" When Willow hesitated, Buffy got up, took her hand and gave it a comforting squeeze. Given who the new Scooby member was, she thought Willow's crush was probably Tara, but assuming could cause awkwardness if she was wrong. "Honestly, Willow, it doesn't bother me. And I'm sure Giles and Xander would feel the same way."

Willow debated saying anything about her attraction to the girl in question. "Well, it isn't anything definite yet. We're still just trying to get to know each other right now. I don't even know for sure if _she's_ into girls or not. Are you okay with me just keeping this to myself until I find out if it's going to turn into something more? Please?" she begged.

Going to her closet, Buffy gave her a warning, "That's fine, Willow. But if you start to act weird, then I will want to know more. So, no secrety agent stuff, 'k?"

"I promise. As soon as I know anything, you'll be the second person I tell. 'Cause, you know, _she_ would be the first," Willow shut up before she went into full babble mode.

"Makes sense. Now, how 'bout we go out for a mocha?" Buffy asked, reaching for her coat and weapons.

Willow smiled, relieved at how well it went. "Sounds perfect. Let's go."

* * *

**TBC…**


	3. Chapter 3: Telling the Team

**Chapter 3: Telling the Team**

A/N: Okay, so this might seem a bit harsh towards McKay, but he was kind of this arrogant before spending time in Atlantis.

Challenge: #2666 'Conception by Conspiracy' by zoev. It isn't an exact match, but hopefully it's close enough for zoev.

Thanks to my betas: Waverly and Gideon.

Disclaimer: BtVS/AtS characters belong to Joss Whedon / Mutant Enemy. Stargate characters belong to Robert C. Cooper and Brad Wright / SyFy Channel. I claim no rights to any copyrighted material. Please do not copy or take this story without my permission.

* * *

**SGC conference room**

"Why did they pick you two?" Doctor Rodney McKay asked, looking at Jack and Daniel with confusion.

Despite being appalled by the situation, both Daniel and Jack were insulted by the question – even though they should have expected it from McKay, given their prior experience with the man.

"Excuse me?" "Hey!" they yelled at the same time.

McKay honestly didn't understand why they were so upset; he just had that kind of personality. "No offense intended, but what's so special about you? I mean, I get why they wanted Teal'c. After all, he's a Jaffa, and that's an interesting avenue to explore. And me…well, that's pretty obvious," he added, sounding extremely arrogant to the others.

"Not to me," Jack muttered in a stage whisper.

"Because I'm one of the smartest people on the planet! You mix my intellect with her physical strengths, and you would have an incredible child on your hands," McKay said almost dreamily – which disturbed SG-1 and General Hammond. Then he turned thoughtful and continued, "Well, that is, if they didn't over-estimate her abilities."

Jack sneered at the pompous ass, "Don't you think you may be over-estimating your own worth?"

Totally missing the sarcastic tone in the man's voice, McKay replied, "Umm, not really. I just wish I could understand why they'd pick an average soldier and a fairly good linguist."

Surprising everyone in the room, Teal'c answered McKay's question, "O'Neill has had the library of the Ancients downloaded into his brain, and the Asgard have a high regard for him. DanielJackson is more than a 'fairly good' linguist. Besides myself, he is the one person on Earth who has an intimate knowledge of the culture and language of the Goa'uld."

The former-First Prime couldn't help but get his own dig in at the man who insulted his friends and colleagues, "While you may or may not be considered valuable on your planet, they – as well as MajorCarter – are considered valuable on many worlds. If there were a way to create a child with two women, I am certain MajorCarter would be a candidate as well," he added, nodding to the major.

Hammond hid his grin at the way Teal'c put McKay in his place. "Well said, Teal'c."

"Thanks, Teal'c," Carter and Daniel chorused.

Jack patted him on the shoulder. "Yeah, big guy."

Stung by the comment, McKay almost pouted as he repeated, "I said, no offense intended."

Ignoring what must have been the lamest excuse for an apology he'd ever heard, Hammond moved on, "Anyway, what we have to determine is whether they have inseminated the young lady or not. If they have, we'll need to decide what to tell her. It is my understanding that she sees them as allies against something labeled HSTs – or Hostile Subterrestrials. Regardless of whether they've gotten that far in their plans or not, my initial reaction is to relieve anyone involved of their position," he announced.

"What if she's pregnant when we get there?" Carter asked what she thought was the next logical question.

Daniel spoke up, "My understanding is that anyone involved could be charged with sexual assault, criminal malpractice, possibly criminal assault and battery. Not sure the criminal justice system ever envisioned this particular crime." It was too horrible to think about.

And Carter must have agreed, because she asked, "What sane person would? By the way, how old is Miss Summers, General?"

Knowing the feathers this would ruffle, Hammond hesitated before he replied, "She's about to have her 19th birthday this month."

"Jail is too good for these monsters. I say we find a nice Goa'uld-occupied world and dropkick their butts through the gate," Jack suggested with a growl.

"I agree with Jack," Daniel concurred strongly, slightly startling Hammond and Carter with his vehemence.

Teal'c simply nodded gravely, "Indeed."

Bewildered by why they were making such a big deal out of this, McKay blurted out, "What? You're all acting like she can't just get rid of it if she doesn't want to be pregnant. It's not as if it's the end of the world."

Jack practically jumped out of his chair to stalk over to the guy, but a nod from General Hammond had Teal'c intercepting him. "Permission to throw him through the gate, too, sir?"

"Denied…unfortunately," Hammond added under his breath, glaring at the 'genius' scientist.

Once he was sure that O'Neill was calm enough, Teal'c let go of him, then inquired, "Should we not be making plans to depart?"

Hammond nodded. "Dr. Fraiser is just getting some of her own medical equipment ready. She said she doesn't trust them to have what she needs."

Speaking of taking their own equipment… "Sir? Are we going to take any zats with us?" Jack asked hopefully. Maybe he could use these people as target practice.

Staring at his 2IC, Hammond quirked an eyebrow. "Do you really think it's necessary?"

"It's the NID, sir," Jack reminded him. "I think anything we have is necessary – plus a bunch of stuff we don't have."

"What are we going to do about Buffy Summers though? I mean, if she _is_ pregnant," Daniel clarified.

"The President suggested that we tell her part of the truth," Hammond answered. "Mostly just that you four are the potential fathers. If she is willing to sign a non-disclosure agreement – and if things have gone well up to that point – we can tell her certain things about the Stargate program. If she really is a hok'tar, or has some other skill that would be valuable to us, we can tell her everything. But he was very clear that she has to have something more valuable than just being pregnant," he added so there was no confusion in the matter.

**

* * *

**

Infirmary

"Can you believe that man! _'It's not as if it's the end of the world.'_ I'd like to see how he likes being raped!" Sam shouted, concluding her fifteen minute rant about Rodney McKay.

Janet was distracted by trying to pack her equipment, so she wasn't really thinking when she corrected her friend, "You know she wasn't technically raped, not by the legal definition."

Sam was aghast at the reply. "Don't tell me you agree with him?"

Turning to glare at her friend, Janet snapped, "Of course not! And when I get my hands on the person responsible for inseminating her, I may be tempted to perform my own unnecessary surgery on _them_. Specifically their hands. That way, they can never do something this monstrous again."

"Wow, that's a little more bloodthirsty than I expected of you." Sam was equal parts impressed and scared by the look in Janet's eyes.

As angry as Sam was at McKay a few minutes ago, the CMO of the SGC was twice as angry at the 'doctors' involved in such a thing as this. "These people are what give good medicine a black eye. Let's say that she is pregnant," she posed hypothetically. "How am I supposed to get her to trust me not to betray her like they did? How is she going to trust _any_ of us?" she asked.

Sam felt like banging her head against a wall. That was something she hadn't considered until now. In her defense, she was still pretty stunned by the whole thing. "Good point. We've only been thinking about whether we can trust her with our secrets. I wouldn't blame her if she told us all to go to hell."

"Who knows, maybe when she sees that we are punishing the people responsible it will help?" Janet offered.

"Hope so," Sam replied, but her tone was anything but optimistic it would happen like that.

* * *

**TBC…**


	4. Chapter 4: Something Strange

**Chapter 4: Something Strange**

**WARNING: Character Death.**

A/N: I know this is cruel of me, but I wanted to have the comparison between the two Slayers.

Challenge: #2666 'Conception by Conspiracy' by zoev. It isn't an exact match, but hopefully it's close enough for zoev.

Thanks to my beta: Waverly. Sorry to the other two; I wanted to get this posted this weekend before classes started and tomorrow I need to prepare for them.

Disclaimer: BtVS/AtS characters belong to Joss Whedon / Mutant Enemy. Stargate characters belong to Robert C. Cooper and Brad Wright / SyFy Channel. I claim no rights to any copyrighted material. Please do not copy or take this story without my permission.

* * *

**Giles' apartment**

Glancing at the clock, Buffy stood up and grabbed her bag. "So, who wants to go with me to the hospital today?" she asked the almost daily question.

Anya frowned, confused at the blonde Slayer's insistence that they spend time with the woman who tried to kill them and help the Mayor ascend to a full demon. "Isn't Faith evil? Why do you waste time visiting her? I thought you slayed evil, not babysat it until it was a threat again."

Ignoring the irony of Anya, the former Vengeance Demon for Scorned Women, asking that question, Buffy answered, "Because Faith helped us beat the Mayor. She told me how to get him to chase me into the school instead of eating the senior class. That make her a probationary Scooby – at least until she wakes us and proves otherwise."

"Buffy's a firm believer in second chances," Willow declared, half-proud/half-worried about the decision to care for Faith. When she started to get upset, though, she reminded herself that if she ever went evil – as if _that_ could happen – she hoped Buffy would try to save her too.

Xander snarked, "Yeah, just ask Deadboy how many she's given him."

Seeing the annoyed expression on Buffy's face, Giles quickly moved to join her. "And on that note, I believe I will join you today, Buffy," he offered before she could reply to Xander's comment. Sometimes that boy needed to think a little more before he spoke. Setting aside his dislike for Angel, Xander should at least consider how his words hurt Buffy – somebody he _did_ care for.

**

* * *

**

Hospital

As they were approaching Faith's room, they saw a doctor exit and walk down the hallway, towards the hospital exit. Buffy pulled her Watcher back before the doctor could see either of them, whispering, "Giles, something weird is going on here. That guy who just left Faith's room is part of the Initiative. I think his name is Dr. Angleman or something. He's Professor Walsh's top scientist guy. Why would he be in Faith's room?"

"I don't know." After thinking about it for a minute, he asked, "Did you tell anyone about her being a Slayer?"

Her answer was quick and absolute, "No."

That surprised him a little. "Not even Riley?" Giles thought she'd at least tell her boyfriend.

Buffy shook her head vehemently, "Not even Riley. I haven't told him anything supernatural about the rest of the gang. All he knows is that I'm the Slayer – and that's only because he saw me fighting those Gentlemen things."

He instinctively inquired, "Why not?"

"Just didn't feel right spilling everyone's secrets to a guy I just met – especially when he works for a group that experiments on non-humans. Who knows what they'd consider non-human?" she added, thinking of Oz or even herself. Heck, maybe they'd even try to figure out how magick worked by experimenting on Giles, Willow, Ethan or Tara.

Giles looked down proudly at her, remarking, "That's a very wise attitude to take."

"Gee, I'll try not to feel insulted by the surprise in your voice," Buffy replied snarkily.

"I'm sorry, Buffy. I just thought you were enamored with both Riley and his group," he said, allowing a little bit of his insecurities show.

Buffy saw the hurt in his eyes and felt like smacking herself for making him doubt his place in her life. Right now they had bigger worries though. "No…and seeing one of them in Faith's room makes me even more leery about them."

They asked the duty nurse how often Dr. Angleman came to see Faith and were surprised to hear that he'd been coming almost daily for the five weeks. How had he managed to avoid been seen before this?

"It could be that we've seen him," Giles theorized as they walked away from the nurses' station, "…but until you met him at the Initiative, it didn't seem odd."

"I guess," Buffy allowed reluctantly. She still thought something freaky was going on.

Moving into Faith's room, they looked for anything out of the ordinary to explain the Initiative doctor's visits to the comatose Slayer. Unfortunately, the only thing even remotely strange was a full IV bag. Giles checked the patient file to see when it had been last changed, and sure enough…there was Angleman's signature next to the notation a few minutes prior. But it was listed as a total parenteral nutrition (TPN) IV – basically a food and water mixture.

Buffy thought back to when she saw Faith before. The change wasn't so big compared to the day before, but as she searched her memories of the week before, it became more noticeable…at least in her mind. "Does she look weaker to you?" she asked Giles, needing a second opinion. "I don't think I've seen her look this bad since that first night she was here."

He studied the younger girl more closely, surprised he hadn't noticed it immediately. He didn't visit as often as Buffy, so the changes were clearer to him. "Now that you mention it, she does appear more drawn since the last time I was here – which was last week."

Poking her head out into the hallway, Buffy flagged down a passing nurse. "Excuse me, nurse? Can you tell me what's going on with Faith? She looks like she's getting worse."

Even though she knew Buffy wasn't a relative, the nurse had seen her visiting the patient nearly every day since she was admitted the previous spring. The other nurses said the same thing. That's why she ignored policy to tell her, "She's been fighting something the past month. Every day she seems to lose a little ground to whatever it is. There are no indications of what it could be, though. This past week has been especially hard for her."

"Is there anything we can-" Giles' question was cut off by the machines going haywire. He and Buffy were pushed to the corner as the nurses and doctors attempted to resuscitate Faith. Twenty-two torturous minutes later, the attending doctor put the paddles back and glanced at the clock. "Calling it at 1547."

"I'm so sorry, Buffy." Giles caught the doctor before he left, asking, "Is there going to be an autopsy?"

The doctor nodded, "Yes. Her condition was improving until recently; we even hoped that she would wake up soon. Now we'd like to know what went wrong."

Once they were alone in the room with her sister-Slayer, Buffy hissed, "We need to take some of that fluid in the IV bag. So help me, if they had anything to do with Faith's death…"

Giles located a clean urine specimen cup and drained enough fluid to fill it. "We'll let Willow study this before we worry about the Initiative, alright? If it does turn out that they _were_ involved, we'll find a way to make them pay," he vowed, letting hints of Ripper peek out from his calm Watcher-persona.

* * *

**TBC…**


	5. Chapter 5: Initiative 101

**Chapter 5: Initiative 101**

Challenge: #2666 'Conception by Conspiracy' by zoev. It isn't an exact match, but hopefully it's close enough for zoev.

Thanks to my betas: zigpal, winddancer and JacobPhoenix.

Disclaimer: BtVS/AtS characters belong to Joss Whedon / Mutant Enemy. Stargate characters belong to Robert C. Cooper and Brad Wright / SyFy Channel. I claim no rights to any copyrighted material. Please do not copy or take this story without my permission.

* * *

**Charter plane**

**Somewhere between Colorado Springs and Sunnydale**

To keep their plans as quiet as possible, General Hammond managed to procure a private charter for them to take to Sunnydale. After some heavy discussions, it was finally decided that since they didn't know what they were walking into, SG-1 needed some back-up to shut the Initiative down. The SG-5 Marines were going to provide the military power, and with any luck, SG-7 – being a scientific/medical team – would help with understanding what it was those people were doing in Sunnydale.

As they were boarding, Major Davis handed over more detailed information packets to the three teams. Only SG-1's had mention of the insemination project, though. Because they were already aware of the project, McKay and Fraiser sat with the team to discuss the new information they received. To say the least, it was…startling.

Apparently these HSTs were creatures that sounded like they belonged in horror movies. In fact, at one point Teal'c commented, "The description they give for this hostile 17 – and others like it – sounds like the vampires from your movies. I did not realize they existed."

"That makes two of us, big guy," Jack replied, wondering what kind of mess they were going into.

McKay scoffed at the notion, "Please! They're obviously a different kind of alien that we haven't encountered yet on other planets."

Daniel couldn't stop himself from mouthing _'We?'_ to Carter, who silently shook her head at the arrogant scientist who suddenly thought he was part of the team somehow.

_Her_ concern was something different, however. "I'm more interested in how long they've been monitoring events in Sunnydale before commencing operations. Five years seems like a long time to wait. Especially if these creatures were posing that big of a threat to the local population. Why didn't they do anything to help?" Carter asked.

Scanning his packet, Daniel answered her semi-rhetorical question, "According to this, they only received approval from Mayor Wilkins to set up their facility in Sunnydale _if_ they promised to wait until 2000 to start gathering specimens."

"Uhh, Danny-boy, it isn't 2000 yet," Jack pointed out.

Daniel looked bewildered at that, but kept reading. Shortly he nodded and summarized for them, "Right. Says here that the mayor was speaking at the high school graduation last spring when there was a gas leak. Several people went missing and were presumed dead; he was one of the missing. The Initiative leaders decided that since he wasn't there to enforce the agreement, they would start gathering subjects for their experiments right away."

Jack had the file on Buffy Summers – what little of it there was – and when he got to a certain item, he bit back a smile. This was bound to ruffle a few genius feathers…hopefully McKay's. "I think I might have discovered another reason why Buffy was picked for this experiment," he said in a sing-song fashion.

Carter, a little leery at the badly-hidden glee in his eyes, braced herself for his answer when she asked, "Why's that, sir?"

Grinning boyishly at his 2IC, Jack announced, "Turns out Miss Summers is a bona fide genius."

She frowned back at him, remembering the first briefing they had about the poor girl. "We saw her high school transcripts, sir. She barely maintained a 'C' average. If you're referring to her SATs, those could have been a fluke. Or she could just be good at standardized tests," Carter hypothesized.

His grin only turned more smug, though. "Yes, but there was another test that wasn't on that transcript which the Initiative somehow got their grubby little hands on. At the beginning of her senior year, the school counselor had her take an IQ test. Apparently he thought there was something odd about the 'perceived gap between her grades and his personal observations about her intelligence'," Jack finished, obviously quoting at the end.

Wanting to get it over with, Daniel inquired, "What did she score, Jack?"

"Oh, just a 178," Jack replied flippantly, quite proud of an absolute stranger.

It was worth it, too, because Carter's eyes just about bugged out. "What? I only got a 163!" she cried indignantly.

Daniel rushed to assure her, "You did better than me, Sam; I got a 159."

Seeing the grimace on McKay's face, Jack had to ask, "What was your score?"

"I don't see how that's relevant," McKay snapped petulantly.

Oh, this was the best non-birthday/Christmas present he could ask for! "Hey, you were the one who was wondering why she would be picked," Jack happily reminded McKay. "Or me and Daniel, for that matter. I think your _supposedly_ superior intellect is very relevant."

"Fine! My score was 164. But I had the grades to back it up; clearly she still isn't as intelligent as me," McKay defended himself, then turned away to sulk.

Jack wasn't ready to let it go. He tossed one more comment at the scientist, "You're just sore she has a higher score than you."

"In a way, he has a point, sir," Carter reluctantly agreed with the irritating man. "That is a pretty big discrepancy."

Janet finally spoke up, not bothering to get involved in the IQ discussion – since hers was a 'measly' 135, "Well, she managed to impress the admissions board of Northwestern _despite_ her grades. They offered her a place there. I'm not sure why she didn't take it, unless she couldn't afford the cost."

"They wouldn't have done that unless…" Carter trailed off mid-sentence. She turned to Jack and said, "Sir, I think something strange is going on."

"Well, unless one of us knows somebody on the admissions committee, I don't think they're gonna tell us why they said yes to her," Jack admitted with a grimace. In their lives, puzzles were rarely a good thing; the same was probably true for anything to do with the Initiative.

Daniel perked up at the mention of the college's name. "Actually, we do, Jack," he said with a smile. "Catherine holds a seat on that board. It was her alma mater. She usually stays out of the voting process, but she could still look into it for us," he suggested.

Deciding this could be important, Jack ordered his friend, "When we get to the hotel, call her. If we could offer her a better future, she might be more willing to trust us after we tell her about this experiment."

* * *

**TBC…**


	6. Chapter 6: Faith's Autopsy

**Chapter 6: Faith's Autopsy**

**Warning: minimally-detailed explanation of an autopsy. You may want to skip if you're squeamish.**

A/N: Call me crazy, but I thought it might be interesting to look up what exactly happens during an autopsy. Then I figured why not share the joy with you?

Challenge: #2666 'Conception by Conspiracy' by zoev. It isn't an exact match, but hopefully it's close enough for zoev.

Thanks to my betas: winddancer, tracygate and Gideon.

Disclaimer: BtVS/AtS characters belong to Joss Whedon / Mutant Enemy. Stargate characters belong to Robert C. Cooper and Brad Wright / SyFy Channel. I claim no rights to any copyrighted material. Please do not copy or take this story without my permission.

* * *

**Hallway outside morgue**

Knowing that Buffy hadn't left Faith's side since she died, Giles asked, "Do you truly feel that it was necessary for us to assume immediate custody of Faith's body?"

Buffy just nodded, "If there _is_ something wiggy going on, I'd feel a lot better if we could make sure nothing happens to Faith until we find out why she died. I'm afraid that if we don't watch her, she could disappear and be just another one of Sunnydale's Hellmouth statistics."

Reluctantly Giles offered, "Well, there is one thing I could do to ensure that at least _I_ could be in the room during her autopsy." This was something from his past that he had hoped never to share with his Slayer – almost as much as he hadn't wanted to tell her about Eyghon…but for a different reason.

"What's that?" she asked, standing up to stretch her muscles.

"I have the training and paperwork that shows I am – at the very least – capable of assisting the medical examiner. That, along with our concerns, might be enough to convince them to let me in," he concluded hopefully.

After thinking for a second, Buffy said, "Wait…I thought you were a doctor in the respect of having a PhD, not an MD?"

"I have both," Giles admitted. "My PhDs are in Linguistics and Archeology; the MD is for the obvious medical training and determining a cause of death."

Buffy scrunched up her nose in confusion. "Why would you need to be able to determine a cause of death? That doesn't sound like something the Council would care about."

"They do if that cause could end the world," he explained their rationale. "Most of my practical studies in that area dealt with supernatural causes, so I may not be able to figure out what killed Faith."

"So do all Watchers-?" she started to ask.

He cut her off with a shake of his head, "Only those who are assigned to a Slayer. Because of the time and money involved, only a small percentage are willing or able to receive that training. Once I finished my rebellious period, I decided that I would study as much as I could to ensure that I could do any job the Council asked of me. It was the only reason they sent me here; the other Watchers who were qualified were otherwise occupied."

Impressed that he had trained so hard, Buffy considered her third Watcher and couldn't quite picture him as a doctor-doctor. "Does that mean Wesley is a medical doctor as well?" she inquired.

Giles replied somewhat angrily, "No. I get the impression that Travers allowed his personal feelings to cloud his judgment when he sent Wesley. There have been enough close calls in Slayer history that it is mandatory for an MD-type doctor to be with the Slayer. Either Travers didn't care to follow procedure, or possibly he knew that since I wasn't going anywhere, I could handle any examination."

"Okay, well…enough of the morbid stuff. I'll stay with Faith's body a bit longer; why don't you go find the ME?" Buffy suggested, not sensing the irony of her words.

* * *

**An hour later…**

Given that Faith's death occurred in the hospital and seemed unusual for Sunnydale standards, her autopsy was allowed to proceed immediately. "Thank you, Dr. Kingston, for allowing me to assist and for Buffy to observe."

Over the intercom, Buffy chimed in as well with a small wave of her hand, "Yeah, thanks from me, too."

"As long as you don't do anything to compromise the investigation," the ME replied curtly. Most of the people he handled were victims of animal attacks or fork accidents to the neck. Having a civilian audience wasn't something he was used to – or liked.

As Dr. Kingston performed the autopsy, he explained the steps for Buffy's benefit. He was used to having a student or two watching on occasion, so it was almost second nature to him. It was easier to pretend she was a potential student.

Pulling the sheet off Faith's body, he said, "The first thing we do is examine the exterior of the body for any marks: both for identification purposes and for signs of foul play." He stated her height and weight for the record, then continued with description, "Very little sign of any scar tissue, apart from a light scar on the abdomen. There are a couple of tattoos…on her left shoulder, a heart with a stick of wood piercing it; on the right posterior hip area, the initials 'FL' and 'BS' along with the words 'The Chosen Two'." Lowering his voice, he remarked under his breath, _"How unusual."_

Dr. Kingston didn't look up from the table while he noted Faith's identifying marks, but Giles did, only to see Buffy crying silently in the observation booth. He desperately hoped that Faith's death wasn't the result of Buffy stabbing her, or his Slayer would be heartbroken.

"Now…I'm about to make the Y-incision," Dr. Kingston warned. "If you are squeamish, you may want to avert your eyes." He was surprised that the girl only winced slightly at the sight. "Next, I need to cut through the ribcage in order to remove her internal organs. That will hopefully help us determine why she died. Her organs hold a lot of clues." He attempted to cut them, but Faith's ribs were too strong for him. "This is strange," he murmured to himself again.

Giles' eyes widened in alarm; he should have remembered this could be a problem. He was debating with himself whether to suggest to Buffy that she should come in and cut them, but aside from the risk of exposure, he wasn't sure he should do that to the already distraught girl.

Fortunately, Dr. Kingston made it a moot point when he pulled out a bonesaw to remove the stubborn bones. As he removed the organs, he examined, weighed, sectioned and recorded them.

To Buffy's horror, he then sliced off the top of Faith's skull so he could remove her brain for study. She grabbed a nearby trashcan to empty her stomach.

"I want to explain why I'm putting her brain in a solution instead of cutting it for study right away. To reduce the risk of damaging the tissue, it should be put in a solution of formalin for about two weeks before I process it. Once that is done, then I need to talk to her next of kin to see what they want done with it – assuming she has been buried by that point," Dr. Kingston said.

"Actually, she is to be cremated once a cause of death has been determined. Buffy and I are the closest thing she has to next of kin," Giles told Dr. Kingston.

That caused the man to raise an eyebrow. Maybe he shouldn't have allowed them access after all. But the nurses felt confident that the pair had nothing to do with the deceased's passing. "Very well. Next, I will run her intestines, then empty her stomach contents."

Buffy's curiosity got the better of her and she pointed out, "But she's been in a coma for several months."

"It's part of the procedure, Buffy," Giles replied.

Dr. Kingston added, "We need to be sure that nothing is in her digestive tract that could explain why she died." Having seen the bump earlier, he had a feeling he would know what else he would find in her abdominal region.

When the ME cut open her uterus, Giles exclaimed, "Oh dear lord!"

From her vantage point, Buffy couldn't see what her Watcher was looking at. "What? What's wrong?" She started to move towards the door that separated the two rooms.

"Stay there, Miss Summers," Dr. Kingston ordered when he caught her movement out of the corner of his eye. "We can't have you contaminating the area."

"Fine, but tell me what's the problem!" she demanded, clearly agitated. Apparently that answered the question of whether they knew or not.

"She's pregnant!" Giles gasped out.

"What?" Buffy yelled. Then she turned pale and lowered her face into her hands, wondering if Faith had been pregnant before graduation and they couldn't tell because of the coma. "Oh god!"

The ME's next words put those fears to rest, though, "I would estimate she was about 16-20 weeks."

Buffy's head snapped up when she heard his guess. "No…that can't be. She's been in the hospital since May. Oh…ick!" she exclaimed as she figured out what happened. The bile in her stomach threatened to make another appearance.

"Indeed," Giles agreed grimly.

"I'll have to alert the authorities of this so they can investigate," the ME casually mentioned, not realizing how long the young woman had been in a coma. This would mean an investigation into the hospital personnel.

Giles held up his hand to stop him. "Wait…this may tie in with what we were concerned with earlier. I'm not sure if anyone on the hospital staff was involved."

"You mean those twisted freaks…" Buffy growled.

Although the idea made him nauseous as well, Giles couldn't help but remark, "It could account for their interest in her."

"While I'm relieved to hear that you don't think it's my colleagues, I still need to report it," Dr. Kingston said again firmly.

"Can they investigate it quietly?" Buffy asked, not expecting much from the same people who shot at her based solely on Snyder's word that she was a killer.

The ME had a better relationship with them, however. "If you can give them good cause, I don't see why not," he answered confidently. "The hospital would certainly appreciate discretion in the matter."

Buffy looked at the small lifeless body he removed from Faith's stomach and squeaked out, "Was it a boy or a girl?"

"A boy," he replied somberly.

Glancing at her Watcher, Buffy commented, "If we can, I'd like to name him for Faith."

"What did you have in mind?" Giles inquired, moving over to the window to speak with her.

"Richard Connor," Buffy replied confidently after thinking for a minute. "Despite our problems with him, the Mayor was the closest thing she had to a father, and Angel's last name was Connor, I think. He almost reached her after Finch. The two men who were like family to her should be remembered. Sorry, I don't mean to hurt you by saying that, Giles," she added belatedly when she realized how it sounded.

"I understand." Giles chuckled ruefully. "It hurts, but you're right."

While they were quietly discussing the unborn child, Dr. Kingston quietly set the unborn child aside so he could examine it after his guests left; while the young lady was doing remarkably well with her friend's autopsy, very few people could stand an autopsy on a human fetus. Unfortunately, the child could hold some answers he needed about Miss Lehane's death. He would make sure that mother and child were together when their bodies were taken for cremation.

Then he continued the autopsy by taking tissue samples and draining Faith's blood, making comments into his recording device as he did so. He heard them stop talking, so he spoke up to explain his last steps, "Now I'm returning her organs and once that's done, I'll sew up her Y-incision. All that's left after that is to study the samples I took. Her body will remain in our cooler until we are sure that we don't need further samples."

Grateful that it was almost over, Buffy asked, "Can we make sure that nobody can steal her body until then?"

"You really think that could happen?" Dr. Kingston wondered aloud. Who were these people the pair was so concerned about?

Giles explained to the man, "These people deceived their way into the hospital to impregnate a comatose woman; I wouldn't put anything past them to hide the 'evidence'."

The ME considered that for a little while. They sounded like conspiracy nuts quite honestly. On the other hand, how often did somebody die in the hospital of unknown causes…especially in Sunnydale? "Okay. It's rather unorthodox, but under these circumstances, I could bend the rules a bit. I'll label your friend as a Jane Doe; we have enough of those that anyone looking would have to go through half a dozen records to find her. If anyone unofficially asks me what happened to Faith Lehane, I will reply that I _think_ her next of kin had her cremated before an autopsy could be performed. Maybe that will keep them off her trail long enough. But if anyone with the correct credentials asks, I will not lie," he warned.

Nodding his appreciation, Giles gave his own advice, "Please be sure the credentials are real first."

As he finished his stitches, Dr. Kingston gave them one last bit of information, "I will. Just so you know, despite what the TV dramas show you, I won't have the toxicology results for a few days. Until then, I cannot list a cause of death because there wasn't one apparent during the autopsy."

"Thank you for the warning. I would have been pacing the whole time – and probably calling you every hour if you hadn't. Now I'll just call every day," Buffy said with a half-teasing/half-serious grin.

"I understand. Give the police any information you can on the people you think are responsible for her pregnancy, and I will even do DNA testing on the child to help with a criminal case later. That is, assuming the father was a willing participant," Dr. Kingston tacked on. Dear lord, they were dragging him into their conspiracy fantasy now.

Buffy's look turned positively deadly and the ME was glad she wasn't angry at him. "If he was, it will be the last child he has a chance to father."

Watching the pair leave his morgue, Dr. Kingston couldn't help but wonder if he would be seeing a few more bodies in the immediate future if the autopsy proved whatever they were thinking.

* * *

A/N: The autopsy steps were taken and paraphrased from: http: /www .autopsytv .com /component/option ,com_tag/Itemid,0/tag ,Steps%20of%20autopsy/. The info on the tox reports came from a webmd article. That sure was a shocker to me, given how fast Abby comes up with answers on NCIS. I decided to sorta split the difference. Normally it would take 4-8 weeks, but I can't leave the questions in the air that long.

**TBC…**


	7. Chapter 7: Answers and More Questions

**Chapter 7: Answers and More Questions**

Warning: a canon change, but one I think is kinda interesting to consider.

A/N: Sorry if the languages I mentioned aren't correct for Watchers, but I was just guessing.

Challenge: #2666 'Conception by Conspiracy' by zoev. It isn't an exact match, but hopefully it's close enough for zoev.

Thanks to my betas: zigpal, Kalliza, cutiepie and Gideon.

Disclaimer: BtVS/AtS characters belong to Joss Whedon / Mutant Enemy. Stargate characters belong to Robert C. Cooper and Brad Wright / SyFy Channel. I claim no rights to any copyrighted material. Please do not copy or take this story without my permission.

* * *

**SG-1's hotel suite**

While the other teams settled in their rooms, Carter set up her equipment in her and Janet's room, then joined the rest of SG-1 in the men's suite. Jack and Teal'c were watching The Simpsons until Daniel finished his phone call with Catherine Langford in the bedroom. Luckily, McKay got hit with a stomach virus or something that had him moaning in his room about food poisoning. That would hopefully keep him out of their hair for a while. If Jack had thought about it, he would have poisoned McKay's food back in Colorado.

When Daniel came out of the bedroom, he looked like he had a particularly unpleasant puzzle to solve, and all the pieces were one solid color.

"What's up, Danny boy?" Jack inquired.

Daniel kept frowning, but explained his problem, "I think there was something going on at Miss Summers' school. I'm not sure why they singled her out, but the teachers were deliberately giving her worse grades than she deserved."

That was surprising to the group. Carter asked this time, "How do you know that?"

"Catherine said that part of the admissions packet Buffy had to fill out was an essay in the field which she wanted to study – if she knew what her major would be. She was picking a major of linguistics with a minor in anthropology. Her essay dealt with the similarities and differences of six ancient languages: Latin, Sumerian, Etruscan, Sanskrit, Aramaic and Greek. The paper was far beyond what the committee expected, and immediately contacted Catherine. She agreed with them and called Sunnydale High School to talk about the difference," Daniel told them, his eyes momentarily went hazy at the thought of having somebody with those language skills in his department.

"Catherine was told that Buffy Summers would never amount to anything, so Northwestern shouldn't waste their time or resources on her. The teacher actually had the gall to explain that because the young lady's homework was so sporadic, all the teachers assumed that she cheated on her exams. Rather than investigate, they simply marked the tests down by about a grade and a half…just enough so that she would pass and quote 'become somebody else's problem' unquote. The teacher also mentioned that Buffy was constantly in trouble with the principal for skipping classes or getting into fights.

"Well, you know Catherine; she wouldn't let it go at that, and requested a video conference with Buffy. She would have gone to Sunnydale to interview Buffy in person, but she had broken her leg a couple days earlier. There was nobody else in the room on Miss Summers' end, so nobody could feed her the answers to Catherine's questions. Besides, there were no significant pauses to indicate she didn't know the material herself.

"Catherine tried to determine if Buffy knew what her teachers were doing, but got the impression that Buffy didn't care either way." Daniel blushed slightly, but continued anyway, "She said that Miss Summers reminded her of a female me; she was going to do whatever she had to do, no matter what anyone else thought of her. Catherine really wanted Buffy to attend Northwestern, but with her transcript the way it was, she couldn't convince the committee to approve a scholarship of any kind. She assumed that Buffy's refusal had to have been due to financial reasons. If we can help out, there's still a spot at Northwestern for Buffy."

"If she's really that impressive, she could be useful helping you with translations," Carter pointed out unnecessarily.

Jack was quick to remind them they had a bigger issue to deal with at the moment, "But first we have to deal with the Initiative. Any thoughts on how we should go about that?"

"Would it not be best to determine where the headquarters are?" Teal'c inquired in his usual soft-spoken manner.

"Yeah, but if we have everyone out looking, word could get back to the people in charge." Jack turned to look at Captain Fraiser and asked, "Say, Janet…you feel up for a bit of recon?"

Carter shot Janet a look of concern. Yes, she was an Air Force officer, but her specialty was medicine, not skulking around. "Is that really a good idea, sir?"

Janet waved off her best friend's concern. It wasn't as if she was trying to sneak around Iraq or anything. "Don't worry, Sam; I can handle checking out a college. It'll be good practice for when I have to do it for Cassie."

"I'll have Smith from SG-7 go with you…just in case. Carter, you and Daniel can go together," Jack ordered.

Daniel asked, "What about Teal'c and you?"

"We're going to be handling the town; see if we can't figure out why it's so interesting," Jack told them.

* * *

A short time later, there was a knock at the door, and Major Harper, the leader of SG-5 came in after Janet opened the door for him. "Sir, I think there's something…hinky going on with the Initiative."

Not that he cared about correct jargon, but Jack couldn't help ribbing the Major, "Is that your professional assessment, Harper?"

"What's wrong now?" Daniel asked; something was very strange about this town and anything associated with it. If they had been offworld, they probably would be either bringing in more troops or going back to Stargate Command to reassess the mission.

Harper held out some papers to his superior. "We've been going over all the paperwork we had on the personnel stationed in Sunnydale. The packets we have only have DD 4/1s [Enlistment/Reenlistment forms], DD 93s [Record of Emergency Data], and official evaluation reports for a handful of the people – most of whom are in the command level. Those command people have the other forms you would expect to find for servicemembers of their pay grades."

The hair on the back of Jack's neck was perking up in a not-so-pleasant way. "What are you saying?"

"Even though they use a military command structure and ranks, they aren't actually military personnel. They don't have _any_ paperwork that indicates otherwise," Harper said, emphasizing the word 'any' which indicated that it wasn't just the normal black op bureaucracy in action.

Jack groaned, "Great. I'm gonna have to call the General to see if this changes things at all. Why didn't anyone catch this before?" he asked rhetorically.

* * *

**Late the next day…**

SG-1 and Janet were in the room alone again when Jack gave them the rundown he got earlier, "The General passed the info up the chain to the President, and they said that more than ever, they want us to shut this project down – no matter _what_ we find…at least until they can determine if the missing paperwork is a weird coincidence. Worst case is that these boys are being trained as a private army, but obviously without the legal protections a real servicemember would have if things went FUBAR. What did you guys learn?"

Carter's look was of somebody who wasn't terribly impressed. "Well, sir…whoever trained these people must have neglected to mention stealth and blending in. Anyone who knows what to look for can spot them within seconds. I don't know if it's their headquarters, but they all seem to be barracked at one particular fraternity house. When they get a message from their leader, they run to that house and don't come out, so I think there's a secret passage to a different building inside."

"There is. Smith and I managed to get inside and planted a couple cameras. He's very good at covert ops. If you can believe the cliché, they have a scanner to get into an elevator," Janet reported with a shake of her head. She felt like she fell into a James Bond movie or something.

"Could you tell what kind of scanner?" Carter asked.

Janet didn't even have to look down at her notes to answer, "Simple retina, I think. The mic picked up a vocal scanner once the doors closed."

Jack grinned. "Gotta love those gadgets. Think you can get us past them, Carter?"

She shrugged, then warned him, "Maybe, but doing so could still alert them to our presence."

"I don't mind them knowing that somebody's coming; I just don't want them to know _who_ until we get in there." Jack started his own report then, "This town is a strange place, but T and I couldn't find anything to tell us why they'd pick it for a secret base."

That seemed strange to Carter, so she asked, "Nothing at all, sir?"

Teal'c was the one who answered her, "We did not go out after dark. Perhaps the answer is something that is only apparent then," he suggested.

"We'll worry about that after we deal with the Initiative people. The longer we wait to go in, the greater the chance that they'll figure out we're here. Gear up, gang!" Jack ordered, going to the rest of the rooms to tell the other teams to move out.

* * *

**UC-Sunnydale**

Standing next to their vans, Jack reminded the teams of their assignments, "SG-5 & 7…you stay up here and secure the house. If you don't hear from us within two hours, call General Hammond and take this place apart, brick by brick. Make sure that you show anyone involved our Presidential order to come in; that should get them to back down."

Carter held up one of her gadgets and said, "I've got the scanner, sir. Ready with the voice recording, Daniel?"

"Yes," Daniel answered, showing his own gadget.

Jack nodded to the other teams. "We'll see you guys in a little bit."

As they rode the elevator down, Jack snarked, "Couldn't they spring for some music in here?"

"You mean like at the mountain, Jack?" Daniel teased.

When the doors finally opened, SG-1 and Doc Fraiser were greeted by a team of 'soldiers' carrying automatic weapons. "Guess we didn't get through undetected," Jack quipped lightly.

* * *

A/N: Buffy tells the gang about Faith's death and baby. The ME gets a couple visitors.

**TBC…**


	8. Chapter 8: Nice Little Bombshell

**Chapter 8: Nice Little Bombshell**

A/N: Happy New Year's, y'all!

Challenge: #2666 'Conception by Conspiracy'by zoev. It isn't an exact match, but hopefully it's close enough for zoev.

Thanks to my betas: sorry...wanted to post this for New Years.

Disclaimer: BtVS/AtS characters belong to Joss Whedon / Mutant Enemy. Stargate characters belong to Robert C. Cooper and Brad Wright / SyFy Channel. I claim no rights to any copyrighted material. Please do not copy or take this story without my permission.

* * *

**Giles' apartment **

Ethan, Willow and Tara watched a shell-shocked Buffy and Giles return to the apartment in the afternoon. Xander had to go to work, and Anya...went wherever she went when Xander wasn't with her. Willow was about to make a snarky comment about Faith, but Tara grabbed Willow's arm and shook her head slightly.

Willow was grateful for the intervention when Buffy blurted out, "Faith's dead. She was pregnant and now they're both dead."

"Buffy, why don't you make us some tea and I'll tell the girls and Ethan what happened, alright?" Giles gently suggested as he steered her in that direction.

Buffy nodded absently, moved towards the kitchen, and a few seconds later, they heard her filling the tea kettle with water.

Giles quickly recapped the previous several hours they spent at the hospital...including the news of how long Faith was pregnant. He wasn't surprised when Willow paled and ran into the bathroom with Tara right behind her.

Ethan's eyes hardened. "You think that doctor you saw coming out her room had something to do with it, don't you?" he half-asked/half-stated.

Checking to make sure all the girls were still gone, Giles nodded grimly and said, "More than that, I think they knew Faith was a Slayer and that's _why_ they used her for this monstrous experiment – whatever it was."

"And you're concerned that-"

Giles cut him off by finishing the sentence, "That Faith wasn't the only Slayer they experimented on."

Sighing heavily at his old friend's problem, Ethan commiserated, "I don't envy you having to have that talk with your fiery Slayer. How are you planning to do it?"

"I'm not going to...at least not until after Faith's funeral. My guess is that if they did it, it was when she was in their 'care' awhile back." Giles' face grew even more stormy before he added in a dangerous tone, "What I want to know is whether her soldier boy is in on it or not."

"For his continued health, he'd better hope not," Ethan seriously understated.

"Indeed," Giles growled, almost sounding like a werewolf.

* * *

**Sunnydale**

**A couple hours later…**

While SG-1 and company were planning their assault on the frat house – which hid the entrance to the Initiative – McKay grew tired of sitting around the hotel room by himself. Plus he was getting a bit hungry, so he headed out to find something to eat.

After looking around, he decided on some Chinese – keeping his fingers crossed that it wouldn't kill him and that it would taste good. Once he placed his order, he engaged in a little people-watching since there wasn't anything else he could do in this backwater town; its Wi-Fi capabilities were sorely lacking.

It surprised him when he saw two young ladies enter with a guy old enough to be their father…even though there wasn't any family resemblance between them. Actually, it wasn't the makeup of the trio that caught his attention; it was the fact that one of the girls called the other one 'Buffy'. There couldn't be two of them in the same town, could there?

He moved over to the smaller blonde and tapped her on the shoulder. "You're Buffy? You're the girl who might be carrying my progeny?" McKay demanded with his usual tactlessness.

Buffy just glared at him. "Excuse me? Do I _know_ you?" she snapped.

"Oh, Dr. Rodney McKay," he introduced himself, then murmured, "Huh, who knew that I would find you first?"

"_Who_ exactly is looking for me?" Buffy ground out dangerously.

All of a sudden, McKay looked upset. Nobody told him how they were going to handle the situation with the potential mother-to-be. "I think that might be classified. They didn't tell me how they were going to explain everything to you. It's just like them to keep me in the dark about important stuff like that. Too bad they're busy shutting down that program down; they could actually come in handy right about now," he said, almost to himself. He wouldn't put it past them to deliberately make things hard for him. Like it would have been so bad to leave a couple Marines with him or something.

"That's interesting, isn't it, Buffy? Faith wasn't the only one they impregnated without consent after all," Anya cut in with her own brand of 'speak-your-mind-itis'. Her eyes glazed over in a happy haze as she had another thought she began to share, "It's too bad I don't still have my powers because I could-"

Ethan noticed Buffy was too shocked to stop the ex-demon, so he did. "What did we say about talking about that particular topic in public?" he asked her pointedly.

Anya pouted, then recited back, "That I'm not supposed to. But if ever there was a call for a scorned woman-" she tried to insist.

"I think we should get Buffy back to Ripper," Ethan interjected again, stunned that he was being the responsible one for once.

"But what about our order? Xander needs nourishment so he can give me orgasms tonight!" Anya stressed. If she couldn't say what she wanted, she should at least _get_ what she wanted.

Fortunately, the clerk behind the counter decided to yell their take out order at that very moment, "Order for Summers!"

Ethan breathed a sigh of relief. He grabbed the money from his wallet and shoved it at Anya so she could pay for the meal. "There we go. Let's get the food and get back before she comes out of her shock." He turned to McKay and asked, "Do you have a number that we can call you at later?"

"We're staying at the Express near the mall," McKay stuttered out, still trying to work out what that girl was talking about. Something about powers? Could there be more than one Hok'tar in Sunnydale? But the way she said it made it sound like she didn't have them anymore. How does a Hok'tar stop being a Hok'tar?

"Then we'll talk to you once we've discussed things amongst ourselves," Ethan promised. "You said your name was McKay, right?"

McKay realized that he had to say something or he might get in trouble for a breach of protocol…maybe. "Uhh, yes, but-"

Ethan stopped him before he could get himself into any more trouble. The fact that Buffy hadn't blown up yet was sheer luck, and he wasn't willing to push his any further. "Trust me, you don't want to press the issue right now. If it makes you feel better, here's my cell number," he said, handing him a business card and hustling the girls out the door.

* * *

**Giles' apartment **

"I think the guy was fortunate that Buffy was still processing Faith's pregnancy and death. Still, I'm rather surprised that she didn't rip anything off the man," Ethan finished explaining a short while later.

They could almost _feel_ the blows Buffy was landing on the exercise equipment in Giles' spare room. It was barely big enough for a couch and a couple basic training tools – the latter of which were in grave danger of getting destroyed by an enraged Slayer venting her frustrations.

"So now we have confirmation that there was at least a plan to do this to Buffy," Giles said, a feeling of resigned defeat washing over him. He could keep her informed about demons and watch her back in a fight, but these were humans, dammit! He hadn't felt so helpless since Buffy's 18th birthday and the Council's cursed test. "What was your impression of the man?"

Ethan sat down next to his semi-friend, wishing that they hadn't grown apart over the years. Giles needed somebody he could trust, and even with his recent change of heart, Ethan knew he wasn't that somebody yet; he may never be again. "He was very much like Anya; speaks before thinking…that sort of attitude."

"Do you think it's real?" Giles inquired suspiciously. "Or do you think that they know enough about our group that they would plant somebody like Anya to break the news, then offer the idea that they are 'cleaning up the mess' so we won't fight them on whatever plans they have for Buffy and the baby?"

"Well, it's a bold move on their part," Ethan allowed, "…assuming it's true. There is a sort of bizarre logic to it, though. Who would ever suspect somebody to be that blunt with such a sensitive issue unless it was genuine?"

Giles' expression grew so dark that Ethan had to fight the urge not to back away in fear. "They aren't getting her without a fight. If I have to make a deal with the devil to keep her safe, then that's what I'll do!"

* * *

**Training room**

"Umm…Buffster?" Xander called out nervously as they watched her bend the bars holding her punching dummy in place with her hits. It was a good thing she didn't want a human sparring partner because there wasn't a puffy suit in the world that could stand up to her in her current mood. "You may want to ease up before you cause damage to Giles' apartment building."

"Maybe the guy was wrong," Willow suggested hopefully. "Maybe they haven't had a chance to do it yet."

Buffy took a deep breath and let it out…then took a couple more to calm herself before she turned around. The mixture of despair and anger in her eyes caught them off-guard. "He wasn't," she replied.

"How can you be sure?" Tara asked from her place next to Willow on the couch.

Moving to pull something out of her purse, Buffy tossed a plastic baggie at her best friends. Inside were two pregnancy tests, both of which had positive results. "After Giles and I left the hospital, I realized that I was a couple days _late_. Rather than worrying about it for too long, I thought I'd just reassure myself, so I told Giles I needed to grab something from the grocery store. To be honest, I can't remember what else I bought to hide the fact I bought the tests. At first I was going to wait until tomorrow morning 'cause it said to use it first thing after you wake up, but then we met that guy and I just had to know."

"Oh, Buffy!" Willow cried out, jumping to embrace her. Tara and Xander were right behind her in the group hug.

Anya slowly approached them, unsure of her place in the group dynamics yet. She awkwardly patted Buffy on the shoulder in an attempt to comfort her. "I could try to call in a favor with one of the other vengeance demons," she offered. "There's the demon for mothers of ritual. He doesn't get a lot of business these days so he'd probably waive the stipulation that you have to give birth before being considered a mother."

To her surprise – and everyone else's – Buffy started to giggle hysterically. After a few minutes, she calmed down and took a seat in the middle of the couch, instantly surrounded by her best friends and their girlfriends. "Thanks, Anya. I appreciate the offer, and if my other crazy plan doesn't pan out, I may take you up on it."

"Crazy plan? Why does that make me nervous?" Xander asked in concern.

"Because I'm not sure it's the right thing to do," Buffy replied honestly. "Unfortunately, I'm not sure I have much of a choice. The way I see it, there are two groups after me and/or the baby inside of me…assuming that the guy is telling the truth about them shutting down the Initiative and not just lying to get me to trust them. I can't say that I like the idea of putting my faith in another classified group after what happened this time."

Xander jumped to what he thought was a natural conclusion, "You're calling Deadboy for help, aren't you?"

Buffy shook her head. "No, but it's probably just as bad of an idea as calling him," she agreed with an ominous tone in her voice.

* * *

A/N: Decided not to go with the cliché meeting that involved the supernatural.

**TBC…**


	9. Chap 9: Taking Down the Initiative, Pt 1

**Chapter 9: Taking Down the Initiative, Part 1**

Warning: OC introduced in this chapter because I'm still not sure what to do with Riley.

A/N: This chapter got to be so long that I cut it into two parts so that it doesn't dwarf the other chapters.

Challenge: #2666 'Conception by Conspiracy' by zoev. It isn't an exact match, but hopefully it's close enough for zoev.

Thanks to my beta: zigpal.

Disclaimer: BtVS/AtS characters belong to Joss Whedon / Mutant Enemy. Stargate characters belong to Robert C. Cooper and Brad Wright / SyFy Channel. I claim no rights to any copyrighted material. Please do not copy or take this story without my permission.

* * *

**Initiative**

As much as Jack liked to be casual and irreverent, he could play the part of hardnosed Colonel when the situation called for it. Standing in the elevator of a secret base underneath a frat house at a California university with weapons pointed at him and his people was precisely one of those situations. He barked at the young men in front of him, "At ease! I have orders for your commanding officer from the Commander in Chief. Either get him here immediately, or take us to him!"

He was curious what their response would be to his orders. If it were the SGC, the guards would take the papers and bring them to Hammond. If they let him and his team get further into the base, he would know their training wasn't as thorough as it should be – despite the legality of whatever they were doing here.

One soldier lowered his weapon to hold out his hand. "Orders, sir?" he demanded respectfully. Jack could have sworn he saw a glimmer of a satisfied smirk on the man's face as he glanced at the papers. He passed them to another of the 'soldiers' – Jack reminded himself that a majority of these people weren't actually military, even though they might think they were – and said, "Take these to the Colonel. Gates and Miller will help me guard our guests until he makes a decision about them."

Once they were alone, the young man caught the eyes of the other two and gave a slight nod. That apparently was a signal for them because they immediately relaxed as well. "I'm Mark Stegus, sir; this is Forrest Gates and Graham Miller," he introduced himself and the other two before asking, "You're here to inspect our operation? Make sure there isn't anything hinky going on?" His tone was so hopeful, that Jack's 'oh crap' meter kicked into high gear. How bad could things be if they _wanted_ to be shut down?

"Yes," Jack replied guardedly.

"Great," Stegus said, breathing a sigh of relief. "We don't have much time before the Colonel comes storming over, demanding to know who is invading his little kingdom. How much do you know about what we do here?"

Daniel answered the question instead of Jack, "Something about capturing and studying something called HSTs. The descriptions of the HSTs sound like they belong in horror movies. But it's a different experiment that brings us here, though."

"That sounds ominous," Forrest murmured softly. "Like the crap with the demons isn't bad enough? We should just kill them, not try to tame them," he stated vehemently.

"Demons?" Sam repeated in shock. She could handle when people from other worlds said a creature was a demon because they didn't know any better, but when it came from another person on Earth? Her logic failed to point out to her that he wasn't aware of the Goa'uld or other alien species either. Maybe it was the uniform he was wearing that was short-circuiting her normal reasoning patterns.

Stegus shot his teammate a reproachful look for stating it so bluntly, "We all know your opinion, Forrest. Sorry about that; he should have found a way to break the news a little more gently. Those descriptions belong in horror movies because the creatures they are about come from those movies…or vice versa, I suppose.

"There are many classifications, but the most prolific and dangerous – in my opinion – is the vampire. There are tougher demons, but they generally look like demons. What makes vampires so deadly is the fact they look like ordinary humans most of the time," he tried to explain. It was hard to fully understand until you saw one face-to-face, though.

"Stegus!" Graham hissed in warning, jerking his head at something behind him. The three men snapped to attention again and trained their weapons on SG1 and Janet.

Like Stegus warned them, a colonel came stomping up the stairs, glaring at the trespassers. "Just who do you think you are? Coming into _my_ facility and making demands of _my_ men!" he snarled.

Jack sneered a little as he retorted, "I think I'm somebody with Presidential Orders to inspect this operation, shut it down if I find any illegal or even morally questionable activity, and arrest the ones responsible. Don't like it? Take it up with the President. But I'll tell you right now that it'd be better for whatever career you hope to keep if you cooperate with us."

Haviland considered his options carefully. As much as he wanted to deny them access, he had checked the orders and found out they were legitimate. When it came right down to it, his people were responsible for killing and/or capturing the HSTs. What happened to them after that was Walsh's purview. Or at least that would be the line he would stick with when they questioned him. Fortunately for him, his mission orders would back him up on that. He sighed and asked, "Okay, then…is there any place in particular you'd like to start?"

Wary at the easy capitulation, Jack gestured to Carter while he answered. "I'll have my people look over the stated mission projects. I'd like to talk to you and the other facility leaders about a project that caught the President's attention."

Barely resisting the urge to groan, Haviland made the decision right then and there that he wouldn't even feel guilty about distancing himself from Walsh. After all, they apparently were in this mess because of her and her stupid personal projects. Which one was it that upset the President? The project that required different bits from various demons they captured or the one he knew existed, but nothing else about it? He hoped it was the second one, so he could honestly ignorance.

"Any projects not outlined in our mission statement are solely the responsibility of the head of our civilian personnel, Dr. Maggie Walsh," Haviland declared, formally acknowledging to his men and the outsiders what his stance was in this matter.

Jack wanted to know if the man was just a weaselly bureaucratic colonel – ie. only interested in covering his own ass – or if he really didn't know what Walsh was up to with the pregnancy project. To that end, he opted to go with revealing it without warning and judging the man's reaction, "So you don't know about her plan to create a super soldier by impregnating a young girl with sperm from selected individuals who have traits or characteristics deemed useful to such a soldier?"

"That seems rather tame compared to her other projects," Haviland replied in confusion. "This is the first I've heard of it though. I've heard rumors about something called 314, but that has to do with harvesting specific demon parts. And I have my suspicions about the vitamins she feeds the soldiers; seems a little like steroids or something similar." He shook his head as he continued to speculate about this new wrinkle, "There are no female soldiers here, which means she's using a civilian for that other project. That doesn't sound like the Maggie Walsh I know."

"Why not?" Daniel asked.

"If it's a project that Walsh is involved with, it has to have serious risks attached to it. She views scientists as less dispensable than soldiers, and I can't believe she'd use one of them for that project, which begs the question: who is she using?"

Jack was pleased with the amount of information the man was willing to share with them, even if he wasn't happy about the information itself, so he added a little more himself. "Buffy Summers," he told them.

All of the soldiers grimaced at his announcement. Gates and Miller had a slightly stronger reaction, however. "What?!" they yelled in tandem.

"You know her?" Sam asked.

"She's dating our friend and squad leader, Riley Finn. I wonder if he knows about this," Graham said to Forrest.

"He'd better hope for his sake that he doesn't. She'll kick his ass to the other side of town if he does. To be honest, I'll help her if that's the case." Forrest paused for a moment while he thought, then exclaimed, "Oh man, I bet I know when it happened! Buffy was hurt a couple weeks ago during one of her patrols and Walsh had her treated in the infirmary."

"So Buffy works with the Initiative?" Jack inquired, a little surprised because she didn't have the training to be a scientist and she wasn't listed on any of the records they had.

"Not officially," Graham hedged, then explained, "She's more like a civilian expert on the subject of demons. According to Riley, her kill count is higher than all of ours put together – even if you count our captures as 'kills'. That's the main difference between us, though. She doesn't capture them; she kills them."

Forrest spoke up then, mentioning something that could save or doom them all later, depending on what the truth was, "We'd better find out if Riley knew about this before we approach her. I would love to be able to say he wouldn't possibly be mixed up in something like this, but…"

"It's Walsh, and when she says jump, he doesn't even ask how high; he just jumps until she says he's done it correctly," Graham finished. They were friends, but that didn't stop them from seeing Riley's flaws.

"I don't envy you having to tell Buffy that Walsh did this to her – assuming she did," Forrest told the strangers apologetically. "I get the feeling she isn't our biggest fan to begin with; this could have her tearing the place apart, brick by brick."

Carter looked at him carefully and remarked, "You sound scared of her."

Smirking at his friend, Graham tried to make it sound less humiliating for Forrest, "Let's call it a healthy respect for her abilities. In order to understand, you should watch her training video. The scariest part about that was she did that without any time to plan a strategy. If she did and was angry enough…give me a couple months' head start, please," he pleaded even though he didn't have anything to do with it.

Unless the young men were prone to exaggeration, the situation just became even more of a clusterfuck. "I guess we'd better take a look at that video then, Colonel," Jack said resignedly.

"Of course," Haviland immediately replied, looking very pale since he _did_ know what was on the tape. Maybe he could be in another state when Miss Summers found out what Walsh probably did to her.

"Let's get our teams down here to start looking things over," Jack commanded. He would pretend it was just an inspection for the time being so he could avoid unnecessary conflict with the project members. Once everything was secure, they could start the process of shutting it all down for good and locking up the ones in charge – including their surprisingly helpful commanding officer. No way w that man's hands as clean as he was trying to make them believe they were.

* * *

A/N: Buffy makes a deal with the devil, in her opinion.

**TBC…**


End file.
